@james-macallister
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I offered my best argument long ago in this forum, but return because I think that Prof. Denis Noble’s new book, “Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity”, which argues for a new viewpoint from which to view evolution and biology is a must-read. For anyone who has been interested in this forum topic in whole or part: those who were interested in a scientific definition of life (verb) or those that felt that matter was somehow being disparaged if not imbued with some spirit or quality of life. Noble is enlightening because he is thorough in his explication of the scales and organization of nature. Here are two excerpts from his new book.
“The body [of a living organism] is therefore formed of very large numbers of a few of the most common small
atoms in the universe, with a tiny sprinkling of a few larger atoms that play a role in enabling certain key molecules to perform their special functions. … It is not the atoms themselves [the stuff of matter] which make organisms special, it is how they are arranged and controlled that defines a living organism. The quantities of many other ions and molecules are also controlled within certain limits. Organisms can detect what the levels are and use this to determine whether to raise or lower the levels.”Matter within or outside of living systems is indistinguishable. It is the organization and control of the system (i.e., the system’s emergent properties) that are recognized by science as the process called life.
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Ursula,
I have a friend who is a Pagan priestess. In Pagan circles there is a fellow who has a “Gaia Theory” so I think it is safe to say that there are more Gaia theories than that of James Lovelock with collaboration from Lynn Margulis. My comments will be specific to Lovelock’s Gaia Theory. Lovelock has on occasion spoken of the Earth System (Gaia) as a superorganism or as the Living Earth. He was doing this metaphorically. He is much too good a scientist to make the mistake of confusing a planetary system with a living organism. Margulis always took issue with such metaphors since they confused many people about the nature of Gaia theory (developed and endorsed by NASA). However, like a cellular organism, the Earth does exhibit a “physiology” that results from the combined effects of life on the planet (99.9% of which is the microcosm). Lovelock and collaborators came up with computer simulations (Daisyworld) of how planetary regulation is achieved autonomously in such a system. That is to say, the system is said to be “self-organizing”. Lovelock’s Gaia theory (on which Earth Systems Science is based) does not state that the Earth System is alive–the biosphere (one part of the Gaian system) acts as the largest ecosystem. It is made up of smaller systems that have been given names such as biome, ecozone, environment, habitat, niche, etc. Gaia is the only scientific explanation for how the Earth has been regulated for over 3200 million years. The only other explanation for this most improbable history (considering that the Sun is estimated to have increased in radiation by 25-30% in that time with no corresponding heating of the Earth) is that it has all happened by accident(s). That would be a scenario reminiscent of the so-called Modern Synthesis which had evolution produced by the accumulation of beneficial random mutations (the odds against random mutation producing the human genome is 1 x 10 to the 70,000th. Considereing that the number of atoms in the known Universe is 1 x 10 to the 80th, I think it is fair to say random mutation (which does happen) is not the driving force of evolution. Is everything known about the Gaia and how it operates? No, but that is the story for much of science. We should be humbled by the amount we don’t know and by the fact that all knowledge is subjective (we know the Universe/Nature through our senses).
I do agree with you (or you with me) that expropriating scientific terms such as “life” or “living” and misapplying them to things like the Universe is not scientific. I don’t need to defend the idea that life only applies to cellular organisms or viruses that use cellular life to replicate–that is what the term scientifically means. If Duane wants to expropriate the term and apply it to the Universe, he needs to produce evidence from studies in reputable peer-reviewed science journals to support his claims. Anyone can write a book about anything and lots of books are fiction. A book isn’t evidence. It strikes me that a “Living Universe” is a God equivalent and what Duane is proposing is another take on “Creation Science”. There is nothing wrong with beliefs for which there is no evidence (the Good Book and Duane’s book notwithstanding), but they do not qualify as science and should not pretend that they are. When they claim to be scientifically based, they are deserving of the term woo-woo.
I strongly disagree that “The most urgent issue we humans face is how we conceive ourselves.” The most urgent issue is honesty and when will we be honest with ourselves? We need to protect ourselves from ourselves. The most urgent issue is anthropogenic climate change which threatens our existence. We don’t need to Save the Planet (it is the planet that provides for us not the other way round). We need to save ourselves from ourselves. The planet and most of life on it are in no danger regardless of what we do. They are in no danger from climate change–they’ve survived worse things. We are in danger. Let’s not fantasize that we need a new imaginary friend, the Living Universe to rescue us or help us “conceive ourselves” (whatever that means).
Creationists used to cherry pick and quote Margulis out of context to “prove” that evolution was “just a theory”. Lynn was a vocal and active opponent of Creationism being taught as science. Lynn said that you were wasting your time arguing with Creationists because they were simply dishonest. In our last election, we were treated to a gaggle of Republican presidential candidates saying they did not believe in evolution. Really? Do they believe in gravity? There are theories of how organisms evolve, but evolution (which simply means change-through-time) is a fact that has been recognized at least since Hericlitus (c.400BCE). He said you can never step into the same river twice.
Yesterday, I sanded my deck with a 100 lb orbital sander. It “had a mind of its own” and I had to wrestle with it all day. I could have concluded that this was proof that the Universe is alive, but using critical thinking, I arrived at a different explanation: the sander was poorly designed: rather than being balanced and allowing me to move it, the torque from the electric motor caused the machine to always want to go right or counter-clockwise.
As far as physicists speaking about biology. I think their track record (the past 70 years of trying to physics-ize biology) is a pretty good argument against taking their ideas about life without a grain of salt. Physics and math are wonderful, but we should not overlook the fact that both simplify the Universe in their calculations and laws. Like biology, the Universe is very messy and complicated. Orbits are not elliptical. We humans have a great talent for simplification and for confusing the models we’ve created with reality.
David Christian (the Big Historian that Duane uses as the definer of life) has said that “In a time-lapse movie of the history of Earth, all of the action takes place in the final split-second.” This has to rank with the most breathtakingly ignorant remarks ever made. We want to be so special, so important. We want to communicate with God or the Living Universe. But the facts are that we are not special. The microcosmos runs the show and has for more than 3200 million years. They “invented” us. They are us (our bacterial symbionts outnumber our animal cells 10 to 1). We could not think without the metabolites they produce. Who needs a Living Universe? We can’t even appreciate the microcosmos–and it is real.
I’m with you on matter, there’s nothing the matter with matter.
Jim
Jim
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Duane,
It is true that there is no complete and agreed upon definition for life, but I think your statement that there is no commonly agreed to criteria for defining life is not correct. You began this discussion with a very poor definition of life according to David Christian, a Big Historian. There are certainly criteria for cellular life that I think most biologists, medical researchers, evolutionists, ecologists and others in “life sciences” would agree on. For example, life requires a source of energy, a source of electrons, a source of carbon (and other chemicals usually abbreviated as CHNOPS) and a terminal electron acceptor. I think Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s concept of autopoesis as described in their book The Tree of Knowledge – The Biological Roots of Human Understanding goes a long way in defining life as a property of cells. They would add that cells must structurally couple with their environment and that this is the most basic form of knowledge as action. Structural coupling is required in order for cells to have metabolism which is another criteria of life. Viruses do not have metabolism, so there is a difficulty with including them as living although there are those that would do so and that would mean that the biological definition of life would be different from a cellular definition of life. This gets into territory that is beyond my “pay grade”.
I think what you are doing is cherry picking quotes that in many cases are not scientific even if they are made by scientists. Freeman Dyson’s remark about electrons is not a scientific statement that electrons are sentient—he is speaking metaphorically. It is necessary to remember that most scientists are reductionists and their expertise is limited to their field or even less—to some subspeciality within a field. Physicists playing biologists gave us the gene-centered view of DNA as the “book of life” which has proved to be erroneous. So it really doesn’t matter what scientists say when they speak out of their fields because they are not experts. I am not sure about your five criteria (I don’t think they would pass muster with most folks in the life sciences). There is a bigger problem though which is that making the Universe “living” makes everything living. EVERYTHING? Yes, that is the meaning of Universe. Consequently, there is nothing that is not living with which to compare or contrast “living”, so the term “living” becomes meaningless. In order for “living” to mean something, it has to distinguish properties not found in inanimate objects or what I would more narrowly define as things that are not metabolizing cells since my claim is that life is a property of cells capable of metabolism.
I would ask why you want the define the Universe as alive? It is going to kill our exploration of the Universe in search of extraterrestrial life since by your definition the Moon, Mars, Venus, the Sun (the list really goes on and on and on….) are all alive.
Jim
Note- I did reply to the email you sent but apparently replies must be composed here, so the above was my reply. -
Duane,
You are asking for my definition of “woo-woo”. What I meant was those things that are not observable, measureable, reproducible or require forces that are supernatural. Science is the study of nature and natural forces. I don’t mean to denigrate things that are not science there are many good things that are not science. It is useful though to distinguish between things that are evidence-based and things that are speculation, beliefs, art, ritual, visions, wishes, dogma, etc. Science is not the only way of knowing, but it is a way of knowing that anyone anywhere can participate in and by following the evidence can arrive at conclusions that other scientists would agree with even if they don’t speak the same language or share anything else in common. There are also large areas of hypothesizing in science where what is hypothesized is supported by what is known but may have many other interpretations. Things like the Big Bang, dark matter, black holes, string theory are often presented as fact when, in my humble opinion, they are hypotheses, not facts. Even science facts are corrigible if new or better evidence shows them to be in error. This uncertainty can be disconcerting to folks who believe that facts should be certain, but certainty is not scientific. So am I certain that the Universe is not alive? I am highly skeptical. Life as defined in biology which is the study of living matter that is limited by all available evidence to Earth originated cells is not applicable to the Universe as a whole. I keep a scientifically open mind to convincing evidence that the Universe is alive, but no such evidence has been presented in what I have read in this discussion. David Bohm said, “Science is the search for truth, whether we like it or not.” So, if the evidence does not support the idea that the Universe is alive (in the manner of cells) that is the scientific truth even if you don’t like it. J.B.S. Haldane said that “the universe is not only queerer than we suppose but queerer than we can suppose.” So even if not alive, the Universe is nonetheless full of mystery, wonder and surprises.
Jim -
I have loved reading and listening to Alan Watts since I was 18 (I’m now 67). Lynn Margulis was a great proponent of humility in the face of all we do not know. That said, discussions require definitions of terms. This discussion is based on the definitions of David Christian and they are very poor definitions indeed. He is an anthropocentric Big Historian, not an evolutionist or biologist and his definitions from both of those disciplinary points-of-view are incorrect and incomplete. So regardless of whether the “Universe” meets them in some fanciful fashion does not really matter. Living has specific criteria. The Universe does not meet those criteria. The rest is woo-woo, not science.
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Karen,
“Think of a piece of monopoly money, and think of Michelangelo’s David. Now imagine dropping a huge weight on both of them. The monopoly money would survive, but is it truly more wonderful?” This is just not the right analogy.
You and I are communities not individuals. The word for our animal cells is the “holobiont”, the rest of each of us is our “micro biome” (our persistent microbial symbionts). The relationship of your animal cells to your bacterial symbionts is obligatory. You cannot live without them. Most of the metabolites in your blood are made my your microbiome including your neurotransmitters.–your thinking. It is the same for every organ system in your body. Your bacterial symbionts is that they outnumber your animal cells 10 to 1. When we think of ourselves as individuals, that is an illusion (or neurosis).
To judge anything requires that it be judged in relationship to something. But bacteria since they are the primary producers on Earth can not be thought of as worthless (like monopoly money) since they make all life on Earth possible. Since you and I and Michelangelo are all more bacteria than animal cells — a good argument could be made for their contribution to David as well. I was saying that if you judge an organism by its importance to the Biosphere (which I would argue is the ultimate measure) than cyanobacteria (and bacteria in general) are far more important than people. It is true that we carve statutes and write books, but then again, it is only we who look at statues and read books, so using those things as a measure is self-referential.
Think of the Earth without bacteria, and think of Earth with only people and nothing else. Now imagine what the world would look like without bacteria (it would look like Mars but a lot warmer.) Now imagine the Mars-like Earth with no vegetation or water or oxygen atmosphere with just people on it. What would they eat? What would they drink? What would they breathe? They wouldn’t survive. I think the Earth that we have is a whole lot more wonderful. It is thanks to bacteria.
David Bohm had a wonderful saying, “Science is the search for truth [with a small “t”], whether we like it or not.”
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I think there is a danger of personal prejudices, judgments and opinions being presented as if there is data to back them up. Let me request that we not become uncivil in simply slinging around mud. I think characterizations such as “scientists rail against” things or that scientists are not good at storytelling or sciontists are not good at interpreting data (!) are assertions that simply won’t stand critical scrutiny. Great scientists are generally quite humble (they appreciate how much they don’t know). Yes there are some, like Richard Dawkins, who rail against faith-based ideas as delusional, but Dawkins is more of a certaintist than a scientist. His own selfish-gene ideas are demonstrably wrong, but he clings to them in exactly the same fashion as a religious fundamentalist claims the Bible or other religious text as proof in and of itself. That is religion or scientism, not science. Simon Winchester writes science-based non-fiction that is easily as good as the best fiction.
It is fine to have all kinds of discussions, such as this one, but it should not be mistaken for a scientific discussion which it is not. I would recommend not using terms from science which have specific meanings. Paradigms, hypotheses, theories and even facts have specific definitions. I don’t think any discussion is facilitated in clarity when terminology is misused. Calling something a “paradigm” which is nothing more than an idea does not make it a paradigm. Arguments from authority, consensus or correlation are not evidence. It is not important that 99% of climate scientists agree that global warming is caused predominantly by things humans are doing (anthropogenic). What matters is that 99% of the evidence says that we are warming the planet. Uniike other ways of knowing, scientists run “controls” to compare what they are testing against the same set of circumstance without that factor, they double-blind experiments so the thing they hope to show does not bias the result, other teams of scientists in other countries check to see if they can reproduce the same result or data, etc.)
Scientists exercise great care. To be a hypothesis, you have to start with facts that you are attempting to explain. You cannot have a hypothesis without facts and evidence. The hypothesis has to be stated in such a way that it can be proven false with facts and evidence. Hypotheses have to withstand critical scientific thinking and available evidence, they have to pose questions and predict answers. After a great deal of testing, withstanding attempts to falsify the hypothesis, experiments, research and data that tend to confirm the explanation offered and maybe restating the hypothesis to correct overstatement or places where the hypothesis does not align with evidence, the hypothesis may gradually become known as a theory. Using the word theory to mean something that you wish were true is a gross misuse of the term. There are theories about how organisms evolve, but evolution, which simply means change-through-time, is a fact, no different than gravity. It has been recognized in writing since the ancient Greeks that the one constant is change.
We humans really have to get a grip on own inflated self-importance, our hubris. We are not stewards of the Earth. To quote James Lovelock, who loves the planet, “I would expect people to be stewards of the Earth as much as I would for goats to be gardeners.” We all need to get our heads on straight. It is the Earth that cares for us, not the other way around. We may have special (meaning different or unique) qualities as humans, but we are not important to the Biosphere. Cyanobacteria, are far more important than we could ever hope to be. They do all the photosynthesis on Earth. Their waste product is the oxygen you breath. We depend on them completely. They would not notice if we vanished. We are not the “crown of creation”. All life on Earth has evolved just as much as we. We are not “more evolved”. Evolution does not “make progress” with humans as the end result. We are just another heterotroph mammal, a clever, dangerous, naked ape. We may be the “universe knowing itself” but that definition would fit every living cell wherever they may be found in the Universe.
There is currently a mass extinction (popularized as the “sixth extinction”) going on and we are the primary cause of the shrinking biodiversity on the planet. It seems very likely that we will be the victims of our own success as “stewards” of the Earth. It will not be the end of life on Earth. We do not have that power. Most of the life on Earth which is bacteria will survive and go on to “invent” some new meta-celllular forms of life. Ian McHarg, one of the giants of the environmental movement of the 1970s had a story about how he saw our suidcide as a species. “The algae will laugh and say, ’Next time, no brains!’’
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I want to say that I agree for the most part with what Ursula has said particularly to emphasize that scientists (if they are true to their calling) are not closed minded or prejudiced. To be a scientist requires being open to surprise, but the surprise must be evidence based and science has very practical rules for what constitutes evidence in much the same way that courts do. There is nothing wrong with metaphysical, mystical, religious, secular or other kinds of thinking or debates, but those should be known for what they are and not claim to be science when clearly they are not. Science has rules and if you want into the game, you have to play by the rules. The same thing applies if you want to join the Catholic Church or the Marines.
Do scientists on occasion fall so in love with their ideas that they forget that nothing in science is ever certain? Yes, they do. but when they do that, they are just masquerading as scientists. Certainty is the stuff of fundamentalism, not science. So when I hear someone going on and on about how something they don’t agree with is “pseudo-science” and rather than debate why the idea lacks merit they just talk a lot of trash or do a lot of name calling, then I begin to suspect that the are victims of the temptation of certainty and they probably know little of nothing about the idea they are ridiculing. Real scientists debate ideas using facts hence they cannot be called closed minded.
I will take issue with Carl Sagan. I have heard the quote Ursula refers to (it really didn’t originate with Sagan but he repeated it). I disagree. First of all, who says that a claim is extraordinary? Some authority? That isn’t evidence that it is extraordinary. Practically all novel ideas sound extraordinary when they are first proposed. Saying it is extraordinary is just an empty attack on the idea. Why should any idea have to produce extraordinary evidence when the ideas it is competing with are supported by just regular ordinary evidence. I think this saying is really lopsided and absurd. I think ideas need to be supported by evidence. The position that the Universe is a living entity is a claim and I did not see any evidence of even the regular sort to support it.
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Having spent some time on this discussion/debate in an attempt to bring some scientific rigor to it, I am not satisfied to let it close with any suggestion that there has been any evidence presented that the Universe is any kind of “living entity”. This is not a hypothesis. A hypothesis is an attempt to explain data or evidence (facts). What Duane has presented is conjecture.
To quote Duane, “The self-organizing behavior of DNA–putting itself together with other strands, even at a seemingly impossible distance–suggests that some level of “knowing” or “consciousness” is operating at this level that fits the form and function of the system being self-organized.” is getting close to creationism.
Statements such as the this call on the supernatural, forces or entities not in evidence and therefore are equal to saying that God did it. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is not science because science considers that to not be an answer. Answers have to be explainable by natural elements and forces. A scientist is not satisfied calling something “junk DNA” because that is an example of giving something a name that gives the illusion that you know what it is or what Alfred North Whitehead called “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”. A scientist finds out what that DNA doe or doesn’t do. A polymer molecule like DNA or RNA has innate physical properties and chemical bonds that are responsible for its ability to replicate. Nothing else required. The shoreline of a lake does not fit due to any kind of “consciousness”.
Science does not rob the world of wonder. Reality is so much more amazing, surprising, complicated, creative–you name it–than anything you dream up or can see on the big screen in computer generated imagery by Hollywood. I took Lynn Margulis to see the movie Avatar in 3D which borrows liberally from ideas coming from symbiosis. We agreed that it was a retreaded cowboys and indians story with symbiotic window dressing that paled in comparison to the things we witnessed daily in the lab. If you are looking for adventure and discovery, become a scientist who works with systems.
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It took me a minute on Google to find this http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html
“For a long time the synthesis of RNA monomers under prebiotic conditions appeared to be a fundamental problem since the condensation of sugar (ribose) and nucleobase (purines and pyrimidines) does not work (Orgel, 2004). The prebiotic synthesis of purine ribonucleotides is still unclear, yet recently a breakthrough has been made with regard to the synthesis of pyrimidine ribonucleotide monomers (which incorporate cytosine and uracil). It now appears in principle to be solved, in a completely unexpected manner. The study by the group of John Sutherland (Powner et al. 2009) shows how nature could have spontaneously assembled pyrimidine ribonucleotide monomers from prebiotically plausible molecules through intermediates that contribute atoms to both the sugar and base portions of the ribonucleotides, thus avoiding a condensation step of sugar and base altogether (Fig.1). See also Nature News for the impact of these findings. While a good pathway for synthesis of purine ribonucleotides (incorporating adenine and guanine) still remains to be found, Jack Szostak argues in a comment accompanying the article (Szostak 2009) that “it is precisely because this work opens up so many new directions for research that it will stand for years as one of the great advances in prebiotic chemistry”.
In science, it is very important to make sure that your “facts” are up to date because they change. Apparently early abiotic synthesis of RNA may not have been a problem or is now much less of a stumbling block.
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“If there now is consensus among origin-of-life researchers that RNA chains are too specialized to have been created as a product of random chemical reactions, then where did the life-forming intentionality come from that enabled RNA to self-emerge/auto-emerge?”
Consensus does not equal evidence. There was a consensus for the past 70 years that evolution occurred due to the accumulation of random mutations to the genes and that the genome was a static archive that was unaffected by the environment of the organism. The so-called Modern Synthesis–all of its rules and assumptions have been broken.
I don’t believe that there is this consensus among origin-of-life researchers, but if there is, I would like to know what the evidence is that has persuaded them that this must be so. Evidence, not authority.
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Duane,
Here we have confusion due to the use of language in the use of the word “self”. Table salt will crystalize out of solution following the form of the NaCl molecule and this might be referred to as “self-organizing”, but what is mean is that the crystal forms according to the molecular bonds in a fashion that is nearly “automatic”. There isn’t any self in a biological sense. I am not an expert on origins of life, but I have spent a little time studying in that field and there is a good deal of molecular evolution that would have taken place on the early Earth. Their would have been an abundance of organic molecules (since these exist in space and would have been part of the gas and dust that formed the Sun and planets). The Miller/Urey experiment and other such experiments have shown that most of the precursor molecules for life can be formed by natural processes occurring in the early atmosphere. Various “scaffolds” such as clays or pumices at deep sea vents provide settings where more complex “near life” evolution could occur and deep sea vents provide a setting with an abundant source of energy in the form of hydrogen sulfide for many early “experiments” with metabolism. The ideas of an “RNA-World” or “DNA-World” are this sort of pre-biotic evolution of molecules or of early biotic evolution with cells using only RNA at first and then later having some of the functions taken over by the more robust (as I understand it) characteristics of DNA. Many natural phenomena lack purpose or intentionality. They are explained by forces such as thermodynamics, electromagnetism, radioactive decay, gravity, tectonics, volcanism, etc. rather than teleology.
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Duane,
You might want to look at the constructal law <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructal_law> as stated by Adrian Bejan in 1996 as follows: “For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.” He is a physicist and his definition of living is an oversimplification for cellular life, but if you substitute (organize) you have a useful law for why things “self-organize”. Bejan’s reference to flow is to energy gradients so organization is a thermodynamic process. Life too is a thermodynamic process, but one that tends to maximize entropy. Perhaps “auto-organize” would be a better term since the minimal unit of self is the cell.
I will introduce myself. I was an award-winning science and medical program scriptwriter, director, editor for 30 years. I then began working with the evolutionist and natural philosopher Lynn Margulis, I was her colleague and teaching assistant for a decade, earned my Master’s of Science in geography and was getting my PhD with her as my committee chair when she died unexpectedly in 2011. I am a fellow of the Linnean Society of London and I run the website http://www.environmentalevolution and edit the Environmental Evolution newsletter which comments on various Gaian, microbial, biospheric, and Margulisian topics. I will be speaking at the European Society of Literature, Science and the Arts Meeting on “Scale” June 15-18 on Malta. My talk is entitled “Bacteria to Biosphere: ‘Gaia is symbiosis seen from space.'”
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Jennifer,
Since you have asked me, I will attempt to condense Maturana and Varela’s thesis and explain why the new paradigm, the Third Way of Evolution and the new Integrative Biology turns what we have long considered the truth on its head.
Humberto Maturana, biologist and philosopher, and Francisco Varela, biologist, philosopher and neuroscientist, have worked on life and sensing. They came up with the concept of autopoesis in reference to life. Autopoesis is often referred to as “autonomous”, “self-making” and/or “self-maintaining”. However, in their book, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, they make it clear that autopoesis is much more “world-making” or “Universe-making” if you like. They lay out a very logical scientific argument about life (which is more of a verb than a noun), knowing and follow that to human consciousness. All of this argument is as cellular phenomena. So this would be the first point I would make about what life (living) is: it is a cellular process. I would also point out that we are dealing with a definition for life or living which should distinguish it from things that are not alive. The difference between a person and a corpse, for example. I think we can all agree that there is a difference even if we might not be able to describe exactly what it is.
Maturana and Varela begin their book with some words about what they call the “temptation of certainty”. I will say that certainty is the opposite of science. To quote George E.P. Box, “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.” I would expand that and say that we could replace Box’s word “models” with “theories” or “physical laws” or “first principles” or “paradigms” or “facts”. This is because scientific knowledge is at best an approximation of reality or the truth. Maturana and Varela will use their argument to explain why this is so.
Maturana and Varela first take on what knowledge is and they do this in an evolutionary context. They begin with the original cell. Not its origin, but what the cell needs to survive. These requirements have not changed in over 3800 million years. Cells need a source of electrons, a source of energy, a source of carbon, and a terminal electron acceptor. Cells get these from their environment. In addition to Carbon, other elements, such as Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus,and Sulfur (together abbreviated as CHNOPS) are also essential for biosynthesis of proteins, etc. How do they get these things?
In science, it has long been assumed that there is an objective reality, that is, a reality that we observe directly. But here, Maturana and Varela have a great insight: you have to approach the problem of how cells structurally couple to the environment–not as an observer from the outside, but from the perspective of the cell that “brings forth its own world”– inside of the cell through its sense or senses, however basic. So far, the “cell” and its sense(s), advanced molecules, bi-phospholipid membranes, etc. likely originate as a result of physical and chemical evolution—much like viruses—a kind of “near life”. Life happens through structural coupling that allows metabolism (getting and using what it needs to survive). Maturana and Varela argue that knowledge is action to gain and maintain structural coupling. We even have a name for this kind of knowledge, instinct, and we connect it to action, instinctive behavior. Here would be another point: knowledge is a cellular process (action).
I want to switch tracks to deal with the new paradigms in evolution and biology and the effects they are already having in medicine. biology and other fields of natural science. When I say new, I mean newly accepted. This new paradigm has a scientific history more than a century long, much of it done in Russia. Most researchers who are currently doing research in things like the Human Microbiome Project are unaware of the history of the ideas in their own fields. In TED talks they will state that these ideas arose 20 years ago with DNA sequencing. Most scientists who are specialists within very narrow disciplines of reductionist science have no idea of the historical context of their work, much less the history of science as a whole. Being a scientist does qualify anyone as an expert on any kind of “big picture” or systems science or on science out of their field. For example, Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, presents the Modern Synthesis explanation of evolution and genes in the 2014 remake of the Cosmos series. Tyson is an astrophysicist, he is not an expert on biology or evolution. Every rule and assumption of the Modern Synthesis has been broken. Paradigms don’t shift. They fade out as those that were certain that the old paradigm was right die off and a new generation of scientists and new textbooks with new facts replace old textbooks with old facts.
Lynn Margulis did not originate the ideas that she championed but she was a polymath with wide ranging expertise across disciplines and she had the vision and genius to recognize that these ideas made sense and she gathered evidentiary support when the consensus of science was certain that the models, theories, statistical proofs, just-so stories, assertions, such as the Weismann barrier, and misinterpretations of Crick’s “central dogma of biology” proved that her ideas and those of Barbara McClintock were impossible, crazy and ridiculous. Consensus and authority are not evidence. Correlation is not causation. McClintock was right: the genome is dynamic—part of a dynamic organelle of the cell, the nucleus. The genome is rearranged in response to the environment. Margulis was right: mitochondria (the energy producing units of nucleated cells) and chloroplasts (the photosynthesizing organelles of algae and plants) were once free-living bacteria that were incorporated into the cell, not the products of random mutation. Now microbiology is revealing that changes in the genome that are not random in relation to function, non-random changes are the rule. Margulis championed a view of the world that was the opposite of the “big-like-us” zoological model of evolution popularized by Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) that omitted 7/8ths of deep time where all of the important events in the evolution of life happened. Bacteria invented almost all of the important stuff in evolution. Margulis realized that the Earth had always been a bacterial world and that microbes still play the essential roles in the Biosphere, not the megafauna and, as disappointing as it may be to our egos, not us. Now that micro biomes are finally being recognized by science they are revolutionizing our understanding of growth, development, health and disease and opening new avenues for research. They were the top science story in 2013.
James Lovelock is another polymath and extraordinary scientist (an atmospheric chemist who discovered the hole in the ozone layer) and an inventor (microwave oven, electron capture device, instruments for NASA) who “discovered life on Earth” while coming up with a test for life on Mars that did not rely on Martian life resembling life on Earth. Lovelock’s test that revealed “life on Earth” led to his formulation of his Gaia hypothesis and with much work, revision and collaboration—primarily from Lynn Margulis—Gaia theory (a theory that is almost sure to be wrong in some detail, but nonetheless useful). Margulis supplied the microbial underpinnings for Gaia theory. Margulis is now recognized for the Serial Endosymbiosis Theory (SET) on the origin of nucleated cells from the symbiogenetic merger of eubacteria and archaebacteria, for her work in taxonomy, and she is acknowledged as “the master architect for rethinking biology in terms of interacting consortia [symbiosis]”. Lynn Margulis referred to Gaia (the Earth system) as “symbiosis seen from space”. Evolution and Gaia are processes, but they are not limited to cells. They involve abiotic processes, the structural coupling of cells to the environment and the interaction of these processes. They also include influences, forces, energy, matter, etc. from the Solar System and Universe on the Earth system. For this reason, Lynn Margulis never used the metaphor of a superorganism when describing Gaia. Lovelock used the metaphor because the Earth exhibits evidence of regulation (“a tendency to homeorhetic regulation within physical limits”) over 3800 million years and much of this regulation appears to be a result of the presence of life on Earth. The Earth with life is a dynamic complex system far from equilibrium unlike Venus or Mars. It appears that these anomalies including the presence of large amounts of water, continents, tectonics, a reactive gas atmosphere, carbon sequestration, deep time temperature regulation in spite of a Sun that has grown 25-30% hotter are the result of the life process. This theoretical Gaian regulation is the direct result of cellular processes, structural coupling or the combination of those with non-living thermodynamic, physical and chemical processes.
This view which is just beginning to be adopted by mainstream science, social science and human culture will take a long time for us to wrap our collective heads around. It is a view that turns most of our worldview on its head. Lynn Margulis used to put a slide up during her talks on which was written the ancient Indo-European word, “dghem”. She would explain that it was the common root for Earth, humus, human and humility. We humans need more than anything to learn that we are of the Earth, dependent on the microorganisms that transform regolith to rich soils and the air we breath. We need desperately to be learn humility. We suffer from anthropocentricity and delusions of human exceptionalism.
Maturana and Varela were colleagues of Lynn Margulis and some have questioned whether their concept of autopoesis, defined as “autonomous, self-making and/or self-maintaining, needs to be revisited in light of the new Integrative or Symbiotic Biology which has completely undermined the idea of animal individuality. The animal eukaryotic cells are now seen as the “holobiont” and the persistent microbial symbionts (the microbiome) that outnumber the animal cells in animals 10 to 1, make animals a composite or collaborating community. Another blow to our egos, “I” is “us” and our idea of self turns out to be a kind of neurosis. Maturana and Varela argue that to a cell, the environment can be the physical environment or other cells. In meta-cellular organisms many cells have environments that are made up of extracellular fluids, specialized nerve cells that act to perturb the environment, and neighboring cells. Meta-cellular organisms have developed systems, including nervous systems, to coordinate the action of cells to maintain structural coupling. The more elaborate the nervous system, the more the system organizes from a decentralized network toward a center: a nerve chord or brain. These more elaborate systems and senses “bring forth” worlds that contain more information and more choices of action in forms of mind or consciousness. Organisms add learning to instinctive behavior as a recursive function of structural coupling, mind and consciousness.
In humans, our elaborate languages have produced the illusion of the individual or independent “self”. Language facilitates learning, reflection, invention, imagination, simplification, social organization, culture, agriculture, technology and other methods that maintain structural coupling. These elaborate levels have extended beyond cellular processes to the use of tools (in the broadest sense of the word) and the archiving and transmission of proxies for knowledge. They have had a darker side seen in human history as struggles for power, god-complexes, wars, inhumanity (an ironic term if ever there was one) and the suicidal despoiling of the Earth. It is evident that we humans are incredibly gullible and prone to denial. Mark Twain probably made the most astute comment about what distinguishes humans from other animals when he observed that “Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to.”
Maturana and Varela are not supporting a solipsistic view or an entirely representationalist view. Their’s is a middle path. Cells “bring forth” the world with which they couple through their senses and actions, but the world that they sense is out there. Because we view reality through our senses and actions, we can be fooled—as any magician or optical illusion will demonstrate—we cannot be certain that our descriptions of reality are more than approximations. That said, science is still the best way of knowing because it is based on best evidence. Sometimes certainty masquerading as science has us believing things based on consensus or authority, but that isn’t science.
Maturana and Varela end their book on a note that I find interesting because their argument parallels Buddhism in some interesting ways: certainty can easily be seen as attachment, their argument is a middle path, and their conclusion is mindful and compassionate:
“In this book we have harked back to the “tree of knowledge”. We have invited the reader to eat the fruit of that tree by offering a scientific study of cognition as a biological phenomenon. If we have followed its line of reasoning and imbibed its consequences, we realize that they are inescapable. The knowledge of knowledge compels. It compels us to adopt an attitude of permanent vigilance against the temptation of certainty. It compels us to recognize that certainty is not a proof of truth. I compels us to realize that the world everyone sees is not the world but a world which we bring forth with others. It compels us to see that the world will be different only when we live differently.”
Do we inhabit a Living Universe? Given just those things that I have discussed above, which would not be a complete scientific definition of life, I think the answer would be that the known Universe (about which we know so little) is not living because it does not fit even these parts of a definition. However, I am in total agreement with J. B. S. Haldane who remarked, “I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
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I think the basis of this discussion/debate is fatally flawed. The list of qualities that describe life is hopelessly outdated, inadequate and vague.
- Metabolism is more than the ability to “the ability to take in energy from the surroundings to keep going” (whatever that means). Cells are the basic units of life and they have very distinct requirements, a source of energy, a source of electrons, a source of carbon (and other elements usually abbreviated as CHNOPS), and a terminal electron acceptor. Metabollisms come in specific types named for their sources of energy and carbon, such as photoautotrophs (light & C02), chemoautotrophs (inorganic chemicals & CO2), heterotrophs (organic chemicals & organic chemicals), and others.
- Homeostasis may be a feature of the internal chemistry and electrical charge of all active cells, but this may not be a requirement for dormant forms, spores, round bodies, other propagules and variant forms that can survive desiccation or freezing for decades or longer.
- Reproduction may be a feature of some cells at some point in the life cycle of an organism for growth or to produce more numbers of the organism, but a mule, grandmother or a heterocyst can not reproduce but all are nonetheless alive.
- Adaptation would seem to require clairvoyance on the part of organisms and “punctuated equilibrium” in evolution refers to the fact that much of evolution is not a record of gradual change but long stretches of stasis punctuated by bursts of rapid change or extinction events followed by radiations of new species. Horizontal gene and genome transfer (symbiosis) confers novelty and natural selection (an elimination process) winnows out the unfit and unlucky. It is probably more useful to think of repurposing novel traits rather than “adaptation”. The genome is dynamic and the organism has a given amount of plasticity which can be expressed given various information flow from the environment. Putting organisms under stress appears to be one way to invoke change in the growth and development of organisms and these changes have been shown to be inheritable.
- DNA is an important molecule in the organelle of the nucleus of the eukaryotic cell or in the nucleiod of a bacterium but DNA is only a part of the system of the cell structurally coupled to the environment. DNA by itself does nothing. A tipping point has been reached and a new synthesis has replaced the so called Modern Synthesis or “gene-centered” view of life and biology that has dominated science for the past 70 years. You do not have to take my word for it, here is Oxford Professor of Physiology and Systems Biology Denis Noble https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzD1daWq4ng.
Noble also gives a great talk on What is Life? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS6PDOcJwY8&index=3&list=PLnqQJI0EhuwwdoH18CnKcOC6j4qaU_yXI
As to the use of the word “science”, that term has an origin and history and a meaning that I think needs to be respected. Otherwise it may as well mean wishful thinking or “because I said so”. There are many ways of knowing, but sticking the word science or physics onto a way of knowing that differs dramatically from the rules and methods of science, such as “dowsing science” or “Creation Science” does not make these ways-of-knowing science in anything but phony name.
Having worked for ten years with Lynn Margulis, one of the main collaborators with James Lovelock on Gaia theory, I must say I got a chuckle out of Ursula’s opinion that Jim or Lynn were “anti-matter”. I can assure everyone that Lynn loved every element of the periodic table but she did understand that living matter differed from matter that was busy being a stone, a snowflake, a glass slide or a light-emitting diode.
I must apologize for using my iPhone for my first foray into this discussion and getting Francisco Varela’s name misspelled and other sentence gaffs. The book I mention is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what knowing is or what mind is. I think they make a compelling scientific argument that it is an emergent property of life (cellular life – the only kind for which there is evidence).
There is a talk by David Lenson at the second day of the memorial symposium to Lynn Margulis in which he plays a bit of her audio from one of her visits to his radio show and she talks about science as a way of knowing. It is 4 minutes into the clip and worth a listen. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9hTlyfq8PA> Science has rules and is a discipline. It looks for the truth (with a small “t”) as defined as what is shown by the best evidence at the time. There is no certainty in science because it is not objective, we humans do science so it is done through our senses and our minds and they are fallible. But science does seem to be one of the best ways we have to really know the world.
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