emergence of life
Cardiac rhythm is a good example of a network that includes DNA only as a source of protein templates, not as an integral part of the oscillation network. If proteins were not degraded and needing replenishment, the oscillation could continue indefinitely with no involvement of DNA...
Functional networks can therefore float free, as it were, of their DNA databases. Those databases are then used to replenish the set of proteins as they become degraded. That raises several more important questions. Which evolved first: the networks or the genomes? As we have seen, attractors, including oscillators, form naturally within networks of interacting components, even if these networks start off relatively uniform and unstructured. There is no DNA, or any equivalent, for a spiral galaxy or for a tornado. It is very likely, therefore, that networks of some kinds evolved first. They could have done so even before the evolution of DNA. Those networks could have existed by using RNA as the catalysts. Many people think there was an RNA world before the DNA-protein world. And before that? No one knows, but perhaps the first networks were without catalysts and so very slow. Catalysts speed-up reactions. They are not essential for the reaction to occur. Without catalysts, however, the processes would occur extremely slowly. It seems likely that the earliest forms of life did have very slow networks, and also likely that the earliest catalysts would have been in the rocks of the Earth. Some of the elements of those rocks are now to be found as metal atoms (trace elements) forming important parts of modern enzymes.
Noble - Dance to the Tune of Life (Pages 83, 86)
Darwin unlocked evolution by understanding its slow nature. (He was inspired by the recent geological discoveries indicating that water - given enough time - can carve out entire canyons.) Today we are still under the influence of a similar Pre-Darwinian bias. Just as we were biased in favor of fast changes (and could not see the slow moving waves of evolution), we are biased in favor of fast entities. (Of course, what is fast or slow is defined with respect to the rate of our own metabolisms.) For instance, we get surprised when we see a fast-forwarded video of growing plants, because we equate life with motion and regard slow moving life forms as inferior.
Evolution favors the fast and therefore life is becoming increasingly faster at an increasingly faster rate. Imagine catalyzed reactions, myelinated neurons etc. Replication is another such accelerator technology. Although we tend to view it as a must-have quality of life, what is really important for the definition of life is repeating "patterns” and such patterns can emerge without any replication mechanisms. In other words, what matters is persistence. Replication mechanisms speed up the evolution of new forms of persistence. That is all. Let me reiterate again: Evolution has only two ingredients, constant variation and constant selection. (See Evolution as a Physical Theory post) Replication is not fundamental.
Unfortunately most people still think that replicators came first and led to the emergence of functional (metabolic) networks later, although this order is extremely unlikely since replicators have an error-correction problem and need supportive taming mechanisms (e.g. metabolic networks) right from the start.
In our present state of ignorance, we have a choice between two contrasting images to represent our view of the possible structure of a creature newly emerged at the first threshold of life. One image is the replicator model of Eigen, a molecular structure tightly linked and centrally controlled, replicating itself with considerable precision, achieving homeostasis by strict adherence to a rigid pattern. The other image is the "tangled bank" of Darwin, an image which Darwin put at the end of his Origin of Species to make vivid his answer to the question, What is Life?, an image of grasses and flowers and bees and butterflies growing in tangled profusion without any discernible pattern, achieving homeostasis by means of a web of interdependences too complicated for us to unravel.
The tangled bank is the image which I have in mind when I try to imagine what a primeval cell would look like. I imagine a collection of molecular species, tangled and interlocking like the plants and insects in Darwin's microcosm. This was the image which led me to think of error tolerance as the primary requirement for a model of a molecular population taking its first faltering steps toward life. Error tolerance is the hallmark of natural ecological communities, of free market economies and of open societies. I believe it must have been a primary quality of life from the very beginning. But replication and error tolerance are naturally antagonistic principles. That is why I like to exclude replication from the beginnings of life, to imagine the first cells as error-tolerant tangles of non-replicating molecules, and to introduce replication as an alien parasitic intrusion at a later stage. Only after the alien intruder has been tamed, the reconciliation between replication and error tolerance is achieved in a higher synthesis, through the evolution of the genetic code and the modern genetic apparatus.
The modern synthesis reconciles replication with error tolerance by establishing the division of labor between hardware and software, between the genetic apparatus and the gene. In the modem cell, the hardware of the genetic apparatus is rigidly controlled and error-intolerant. The hardware must be error-intolerant in order to maintain the accuracy of replication. But the error tolerance which I like to believe inherent in life from its earliest beginnings has not been lost. The burden of error tolerance has merely been transferred to the software. In the modern cell, with the infrastructure of hardware firmly in place and subject to a strict regime of quality control, the software is free to wander, to make mistakes and occasionally to be creative. The transfer of architectural design from hardware to software allowed the molecular architects to work with a freedom and creativity which their ancestors before the transfer could never have approached.
Dyson - Infinite in All Directions (Pages 92-93)
Notice how Dyson frames replication mechanisms as stabilizers allowing metabolic networks to take even further risks. In other words, replication not only speeds up evolution but also enlarges the configuration space for it. So we see not only more variation per second but also more variation at any given time.
Going back to our original question…
Life was probably unimaginably slow at the beginning. In fact, such life forms are probably still out there. Are spiral galaxies alive for instance? What about the entire universe? We may be just too local and too fast to see the grand patterns.
As Noble points out in the excerpt above, our bodies contain catalyst metals which are remnants of our deep past. Those metals were forged inside stars far away from us and shot across the space via supernova explosions. (This is how all heavy atoms in the universe got formed.) In other words, they used to be participants in vast-scale metabolic networks.
In some sense, life never emerged. It was always there to begin with. It is just speeding up over time and thereby life forms of today are becoming blind to life form of deep yesterdays.
It is really hard not to be mystical about all this. Have you ever felt bad about disrupting repeating patterns for instance, no matter how physical they are? You can literally hurt such patterns. They are the most embryonic forms of life, some of which are as old as those archaic animals who still hang around in the deep oceans. Perhaps we should all work a little on our artistic sensitivities which would in turn probably give rise to a general increase in our moral sensitivities.
How Fast Will Things Get?
Life is a nested hierarchy of complexity layers and the number of these layers increases overtime. We are already forming many layers above ourselves, the most dramatic of which is the entirety of our technological creations, namely what Kevin Kelly calls as Technium.
Without doubt, we will look pathetically slow for the newly emerging electronic forms of life. Just as we have a certain degree of control over the slow-moving plants, they too (will need us but also) harvest us for their own good. (This is already happening as we are becoming more and more glued to our screens.)
But how much faster will things eventually get?
According to the generally accepted theories, our universe started off with a big bang and went through a very fast evolution that resulted in a sudden expansion of space. While physics has since been slowing down, biology (including new electronic forms) is picking up speed at a phenomenal rate.
Of all the sustainable things in the universe, from a planet to a star, from a daisy to an automobile, from a brain to an eye, the thing that is able to conduct the highest density of power - the most energy flowing through a gram of matter each second - lies at the core of your laptop.
Kelly - What Technology Wants (Page 59)
Evolution seems to be taking us to a very strange end, an end that seems to contain life forms that exhibit features that are very much like those exhibited by the beginning states of physics, extreme speed and density. (I had brought up this possibility at the end of Evolution as a Physical Theory post as well.)
Of course, flipping this logic, the physical background upon which life is currently unfolding is probably alive as well. I personally believe that this indeed is the case. To understand what I mean, we will first need to make an important conceptual clarification and then dive into Quantum Mechanics.
Autonomy as the Flip-Side of Control
Autonomy and control are two sides of the same coin, just like one man's freedom fighter is always another man's terrorist. In particular, what we can not exert any control over looks completely autonomous to us.
But how do you measure autonomy?
Firstly, notice that autonomy is a relative concept. In other words, nothing can be autonomous in and of itself. Secondly, the degree of autonomy correlates with the degree of unanticipatability. For instance, something will look completely autonomous to you only if you can not model its behavior at all. But how would such a behavior literally look like, any guesses? Yes, that is right, it would look completely random.
Random often means inability to predict... A random series should show no discernible pattern, and if one is perceived then the random nature of the series is denied. However, the inability to discern a pattern is no guarantee of true randomness, but only a limitation of the ability to see a pattern... A series of ones and noughts may appear quite random for use as a sequence against which to compare the tossing of a coin, head equals one, tails nought, but it also might be the binary code version of a well known song and therefore perfectly predictable and full of pattern to someone familiar with binary notation.
Shallis - On Time (Pages 122-124)
The fact that randomness is in the eye of the beholder (and that absolute randomness is an ill-defined notion) is the central tenet of Bayesian school of probability. The spirit is also similar to how randomness is defined in algorithmic complexity theory, which I do not find surprising at all since computer scientists are empiricists at heart.
Kolmogorov randomness defines a string (usually of bits) as being random if and only if it is shorter than any computer program that can produce that string. To make this precise, a universal computer (or universal Turing machine) must be specified, so that "program" means a program for this universal machine. A random string in this sense is "incompressible" in that it is impossible to "compress" the string into a program whose length is shorter than the length of the string itself. A counting argument is used to show that, for any universal computer, there is at least one algorithmically random string of each length. Whether any particular string is random, however, depends on the specific universal computer that is chosen.
Wikipedia - Kolmogorov Complexity
Here a completely different terminology is used to say basically the same thing:
“compressibility” = “explanability” = “anticipatability”
“randomness can only be defined relative to a specific choice of a universal computer” = “randomness is in the eye of the beholder”
Quantum Autonomy
Quantum Mechanics has randomness built into its very foundations. Whether this randomness is absolute or the theory itself is currently incomplete is not relevant. There is a maximal degree of unanticipatability (i.e. autonomy) in Quantum Mechanics and it is practically uncircumventable. (Even the most deterministic interpretations of Quantum Mechanics lean back on artificially introduced stochastic background fields.)
Individually quantum collapses are completely unpredictable, but collectively they exhibit a pattern over time. (For more on such structured forms of randomness, read this older blog post.) This is actually what allows us to tame the autonomy of quantum states in practice: Although we can not exert any control over them at any point in time, we can control their behavior over a period of time. Of course, as life evolves and gets faster (as pointed out in the beginning of this post), it will be able to probe time periods at more and more frequent rates and thereby tighten its grip on quantum phenomena increasingly more.
Another way to view maximal unanticipatability is to frame it as maximal complexity. Remember that every new complexity layer emerges through a complexification process. Once a functional network with a boundary becomes complex enough, it starts to behave more like an “actor” with teleological tendencies. Once it becomes ubiquitous enough, it starts to display an ensemble-behavior of its own, forming a higher layer of complexity and hiding away its own internal complexities. All fundamentally unanticipatable phenomena in nature are instances of such actors who seem to have a sense of unity (a form of consciousness?) that they “want” to preserve.
Why should quantum phenomena be an exception? Perhaps Einstein was right and God does not play dice, and that there are experimentally inaccessible deeper levels of reality from which quantum phenomena emerge? (Bohm was also thinking this way.) Perhaps it is turtles all the way down (and up)?
Universe as a Collection of Nested Autonomies
Fighting for power is the same thing as fighting for control, and gaining control of something necessitates outgrowing the complexity of that thing. That is essentially why life is becoming more complex and autonomous over time.
Although each complexity layer can accommodate a similar level of maximal complexity within itself before starting to spontaneously form a new layer above itself, due to the nested nature of these layers, total complexity rises as new layers emerge. (e.g. We are more complex than our cells since we contain their complexity as well.)
It is not surprising that social sciences are much less successful than natural sciences. Humans are not that great at modeling other humans. This is expected. You need to out-compete in complexity what you desire to anticipate. Each layer can hope to anticipate only the layers below it. Brains are not complex enough to understand themselves. (It is amazing how we equate smartness with the ability to reason about lower layers like physics, chemistry etc. Social reasoning is actually much more sophisticated, but we look down on it since we are naturally endowed with it.)
Side Note: Generally speaking, each layer can have generative effects only upwards and restrictive effects only downwards. Generative effects can be bad for you as in having cancer cells and restrictive effects can be good for you as in having a great boss. Generative effects may falsely look restrictive in the sense that what generates you locks you in form, but it is actually these effects themselves which enable the exploration of the form space in the first place. Think at a population level, not at an individual level. Truth resides there.
Notice that as you move up to higher levels, autonomy becomes harder to describe. Quantum Mechanics, which currently seems to be the lowest level of autonomy, is open to mathematical scrutiny, but higher levels can only be simulated via computational methods and are not analytically accessible.
I know, you want to ask “What about General Relativity? It describes higher level phenomena.” My answer to that would be “No, it does not.”
General Relativity does not model a higher level complexity. It may be very useful today but it will become increasingly irrelevant as life dominates the universe. As autonomy levels increase all over, trying to predict galactic dynamics with General Relativity will be as funny and futile as using Fluid Dynamics to predict the future carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere without taking into consideration the role of human beings. General Relativity models the aggregate dynamics of quantum “decisions” made at the lowest autonomy level. (We refer to this level-zero as “physics”.) It is predictive as long as higher autonomy levels do not interfere.
God as the Highest Level of Autonomy
The universe shows evidence of the operations of mind on three levels. The first level is elementary physical processes, as we see them when we study atoms in the laboratory. The second level is our direct human experience of our own consciousness. The third level is the universe as a whole. Atoms in the laboratory are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So I am thinking that atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind. We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God. Atoms are small pieces of our mental apparatus, and we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus. Our minds may receive inputs equally from atoms and from God.
Freeman Dyson - Progress in Religion
I remember the moment when I ran into this exhilarating paragraph of Dyson. It was so relieving to find such a high-caliber thinker who also interprets quantum randomness as choice-making. Nevertheless, with all due respect, I would like to clarify two points that I hope will help you understand Dyson’s own personal theology from the point of view of the philosophy outlined in this post.
There are many many levels of autonomies. Dyson points out only the most obvious three. (He calls them “minds” rather than autonomies.)
Atomic. Quantum autonomy is extremely pure and in your face.
Human. A belief in our own autonomy comes almost by default.
Cosmic. Universe as a whole feels beyond our understanding.
Dyson defines God as “what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension” and then he refers to the entirety of the universe as God as well. I on the other hand would have defined God as the top level autonomy and not referred to human beings or the universe at all, for the following two reasons:
God should not be human centric. Each level should be able to talk about its own God. (There are many things out there that would count you as part of their God.)
Remember that the levels below you can exert only generative efforts towards you. It is only the above-levels that can restrict you. In other words, God is what constraints you. Hence, striving for freedom is equivalent to striving for Godlessness. (It is no surprise that people turn more religious when they are physically weak or mentally susceptible.) Of course, complete freedom is an unachievable fantasy. What makes humans human is the nurturing (i.e. controlling) cultural texture they are born into. In fact, human babies can not even survive without a minimal degree of parental and cultural intervention. (Next time you look into your parents’ eyes, remember that part of your God resides in there.) Of course, we also have a certain degree of freedom in choosing what to be governed by. (Some let money govern them for instance.) At the end of the day, God is a social phenomenon. Every single higher level structure we create (e.g. governments selected by our votes, algorithms trained on our data) governs us back. Even the ideas and feelings we restrict ourselves by arise via our interactions with others and do not exist in a vacuum.
Most of the universe currently seems to exhibit only the lowest level of autonomy. Not everywhere is equally alive.
However, as autonomy reaches higher levels, it will expand in size as well, due to the nested and expansionary nature of complexity generation. (Atomic autonomy lacks extensiveness in the most extreme sense.) So eventually the top level autonomy should grow in size and seize the whole of reality. What happens then? How can such an unfathomable entity exercise control over the entire universe, including itself? Is not auto-control paradoxical in the sense that one can not out-compete in complexity oneself? We should not expect to be able to answer such tough questions, just like we do not expect a stomach cell to understand human consciousness. Higher forms of life will be wildly different and smarter than us. (For instance, I bet that they will be able to manipulate the spacetime fabric which seems to be an emergent phenomenon.) In some sense, it is not surprising that there is such a proliferation of religions. God is meant to be beyond our comprehension.
Four men, who had been blind from birth, wanted to know what an elephant was like; so they asked an elephant-driver for information. He led them to an elephant, and invited them to examine it; so one man felt the elephant's leg, another its trunk, another its tail and the fourth its ear. Then they attempted to describe the elephant to one another. The first man said ”The elephant is like a tree”. ”No,” said the second, ”the elephant is like a snake“. “Nonsense!” said the third, “the elephant is like a broom”. ”You are all wrong,” said the fourth, ”the elephant is like a fan”. And so they went on arguing amongst themselves, while the elephant stood watching them quietly.
- The Indian folklore story of the blind men and the elephant, as adapted from E. J. Robinson’s Tales and Poems of South India by P. T. Johnstone in the Preface of Sketches of an Elephant
