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In addition to a balance of gravitation and radiation for
conditions needed for an "endless" hydrological cycle, which in turn is perhaps necessary for life to emerge, I forgot to mention that I think a planet(oid) would need water itself. I was trying to describe an approach to telling the story
of the origin of life as told from the perspective of ecosystemic/community life as opposed to trying to imagine how life emerged as cells/organisms. How is an organism a community? Do you mean inwardly, or outwardly? Somewhere else recently you wrote/asked how could we have the community before the organisms, wouldn't that be like a forest before any trees. This was a brilliant question to me and it forced to me consider or ask whether again the issue has been about time and linear/sequential thinking in terms of "which came first, the organism or the ecosystem (community)". We could be getting stuck if we have asked the question the wrong way - what if it is not an either/or, first/second issue but one of simultaneous co-arising? So that the organism and the ecosystem/community emerged together, the parts (organisms) and the whole (community, ecosystem) arose in a creative synergy event that created life parts and lifes wholes at the same time and as intercoordinated and mutually reinforcing? This is very insightful; particularly the stuff about "are we
asking the right questions, and if so, could we be asking them in
the wrong way"... And I think you've "got it"-- I think my father would say
you hit the jackpot here. Life and ecosystem entail each other. Partly, this is
because living organisms incorporate the environment in which they formed into
their own organization. Because they do, they require certain relations to
continue. Internal predictive models will only predict accurately/usefully as
long as the actual environment remains within certain parameters of the models.
There is also the aspect that, as soon as an organism exists, it is interacting
with and changing the environment. Any new organisms which come into
existence would incorporate the changes made by earlier organisms, because these
are now "environmental context". So, as soon as "organism" exists,
ecosystem exissts and this interactive relational impact is one of the
non-fractionable aspects of living organisms.
The phenomenon is sort of echoed in what happens
with "birth order". There was a book written a while back that described
how the birth order of children in any single family impacts each of
the children differently-- even when the parents are the same, the house is the
same, the school district is the same, etc. Firstborns have the equivalent of
different parents and a different family compared to any subsequent
siblings. Each sibling experiences life in the same family from a
different perspective of relations; from a different place in the organization
of the family.
So it's not a linear temporal quality, such that parenthood is
simply a label that is applied as soon as the first baby is born; instead it's
more like a dimensional shift. Nothing is the same, once that change
occurs. That's the best I can do to explain the organism/ecosystem
relation. It's a co-emergent relation.
Judith
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