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Hi Dan,
I agree, there are surprisingly many interesting facets to this
discussion. One aspect of your post that was particularly brilliant, in my
humble opinion, and unique. I've never seen anyone suggest this particular set
of criteria to explain why there's only one planet in our solar system
which supports the emergence of living systems:
Dan Fiscus wrote:
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. Fascinating. The notion of a certain balance of
planetary/orbital/space-based forces being required for life to spontaneously
self-organize in any locale has the right "feel" to it. (Yes, it's a technical
term...) The reason it strikes my intuition is because the same sort of balance
is reflected in all living systems (which for me means "organisms") here on
Earth, and in all complex systems, wherever they may be. So, perhaps it is
something about the peculiar balance of various forces here that,
collectively, is what has allowed or facilitated the kind of
self-organization of systems, underlying the emergence of life. Would you be
willing to elaborate a bit more on the various planet-wide
or extraplanetary forces which, in your opinion, might be relevant in
this kind of situation?
I have to admit that the physics based terms like "entropy" and
referring to various Newtonian laws by number etc. don't mean much to me, so if
you could (please?) flesh descriptions out with other terminology, that
would be much appreciated. The way I would describe my current,
blurry mental image of the general nature of complexity is a constant
movement of energy from imbalance to balance to imbalance to
rebalance, etc. via constant change and restructuring of the relations. If
time is the constant ingredient in all change, as I believe it is, then that
would explain why change is the only constant, in human life
experience. However, this means that any balanced system or
situation can never remain balanced exactly as it is at any given
instant of time. Furthermore, situations of imbalance are not
inherently "negative"-- they can be very useful, under certain
circumstances-- if they are internalized, any negative aspects need to
be controlled or contained in some way (I think metabolic processes exploit
this very fact) and similarly if externalized imbalances are exploited,
there need to be ways to maximize the positive potential from the relation
whilst minimizing the negative potential (the way our skin produces pigment
to protect it from the sun's radiation, as it also synthesizes Vitamin D from
the energy). Either way, in complex systems (including the universe AS
a system) there seems to me to be a constant flow towards
rebalance, such that the imbalances don't destabilize everything. In any complex
system, balance emanates from the relational aspects
of organization.
I think that this sheds some light on the notion
of aging/senescence in organisms. Aging seems to be somehow
connected to instability in total system balance. It's not any local
problem, or any finite-numbered collection of problems with physical structure
(like DNA damage). Instead, it's the balance of all relations within total
organization that becomes progressively more and more unbalanced over time
(perhaps as the accumulated localized and physical damage requires relational
changes which are not possible)-- and that puts the system in a vulnerable state
as far as any further destabilizing influences are concerned. So a
new local failure, that in a balanced system could be repaired, becomes a
serious threat to continued system integrity/survival. It's easier to push
an unbalanced system into collapse. This is one of the big worries with global
warming, in fact.
I have some other comments on your post:
DF:
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. This is the relational effect of complexity you're
describing. Elements co-organizing to form a compound which is radically
different in expressed behavior and qualities from any of the elements
from which it was created. It's easy to find examples of this kind of
thing, unless I'm not interpreting your meaning accurately. The relations
involved in phase transitions of the water cycle, combined with the relations
involved in combustion, the flow of molecular musical-chairs between carbon,
oxygen, hydrogen which H20, O2, CO2, etc. in the combinations of these two
cycles interacting with time and temperature... have these relations ever
been studied? Or have they mostly been ignored or simply taken for granted as
the molecules and other physical aspects were studied.... In any case, RR
viewed the relational aspecst as examples of complexity at work, even
though molecular organization is simple. (That's why even the physics
having to do with simple systems can benefit from an expanded scientific
paradigm based on complexity.)
DF: 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. You mean, create a system that is "merely" complex, but not
alive? I imagine you mean a material system, right? (Because humanity has
already done this, otherwise: Language is one example. Mathematics is another
one. )
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. Here's my problem with that: Can you imagine any scenario where one
of those forces in a particular locale and scale could be "viewed" as
(could behave as) the inverse of itself, in a different scale in the
same locale? I ask because, while your definition
of entropy refers to a tendency toward dissipation of
energy-- this is only "a tendency" in the universe under very specific
circumstances. There are times, situations, scales, etc. where gravitation
(which you call syntropy-- the opposite value of entropy) can act as entropy.
And vice, versa. I guess my concern is that I question whether concepts like
entropy are what they have been defined as in physics. Physics definitions and
laws are based on the circumstances of a timeless void, and this is then
held up as the normal case-- that's the way it looks to me, anyway. So,
I guess I'm saying that caution is required-- the ancient reductionistic
training can sometimes remain as a tripwire, even after we think we've
eliminated all suppositions, etc.
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. The proto-biotic community would have to be between processes, functions, roles, transformations, reactions, networks, etc. This is a different definition of "community" than I have seen you
use before. It differs in some very important ways from your
previous definition referring to an ecosystem or the biosphere of
Earth, whereby living organisms are components. In this particular
usage, the proto-biotic "community," we could say
this sentence is referring to a proto-biotic
system's organization, could we not? Community, then, is a synonym
for "system of a certain type". In other words, I could
say that every living organism is a 'community" but not all
"communities" are living organisms. Does that fit with your view? If I've got it
so far, then I don't know how you get from this view of community (which you'll
be happy to know has no "gripe" or "beef" with Robert Rosen's view) to later
applications of that word.
I want to comment on some of the other ideas from Dan's post, but
I've got to run in a minute. I'll do so in a separate post.
Judith
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