[Krimel] Thanks Craig this would indeed appear to be Pirsig's account of the origins of life. But it is just a description. It fails to address the how, when or where this happened. There is not even an account of why except through the personification of Dynamic force, which assumes Godlike power. It invents, it ascends, it preserves, it skirts around problems.
The molecular inventions of the Dynamic force are imbued with agency of their own. They reciprocate, preserve, replace, they work together. How does parsing out all of this agency explain anything? Nothing significant about the description is altered by removing it. As for the issue of science's lack of answers regarding the origins of life, there is frank admission that there is a real divide between life and non-life. But science is very good at asking questions and direct research in several directs is well underway. One area involves mixing up some recipe for primordial soup, a collection of the elements and compounds necessary for life and thought to be available in the early Earth's environment. In the 1950 sparks of electricity into these soup recipes did produce amino acids, the building blocks of self replicators but no self replicators. Another group of researchers looks for signs of life deep below the earth's surface. Miles beneath the surface they find primitive microorganisms feeding on gases squeezed out under high pressure. Others find life in hostile cave environments where hydrogen sulfide in the air coats everything with sulfuric acid. Another possible point of origin for life is the hot deep sea vents where heat energy fuels biochemical interactions. Others look into space and find lots of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen floating around often as amino-acids. They suspect that amino acids deposited via asteroid impact may have kick-started life. They test their theories by mixing up recipes of amino-acids and blasting them with pressures like those calculated to result from asteroid impacts. They find that higher orders of molecular organization do result. These are all areas where research is progressing. Is one of them or some other, THE original fountain from which all life flows? Are they independent sources of life? Or are the original self replicators so versatile that they naturally permeate into every available niche? Others approach the problem by speculating on where else life might be in our solar neighborhood. Likely places appear to be in regions of permafrost on Mars. In an area where there is some annual freezing and melting, cracks form and liquid water would flow up through the cracks bringing chemicals from below and depositing them in the cracks. This flow of energy and resources is at the very least worth investigating. Another likely spot is Jupiter's moon Europa, where lots of frozen water is mauled by massive Jovian tides. Again the breaking and coming together of tectonic sheets of ice might provide fertile grounds for life in the cracks. Ian and Arlo have talked about approaches taken by theoretical physicists to conceptualize how variations in cosmic constants might alter the probability of life. This can be addressed to some extent through computer simulations. Some mix and match values for known cosmic forces. Others like Wolfram work with artificially constructed set of rules to see how they interact to promote complexity and growth in virtual environments. All of these look at the edge of life and non-life. Once we step over the line, science has just now learned to sequence DNA. On a trip to Boston earlier this year, I saw an MIT research lab where they have a color display and the progress in sequencing the DNA of particular living species. As there are billions of bits of code involved the process now takes days and months but it is essentially the same process as scanning a photo. The process of unraveling the molecular code of life promises not only to give clues to the origin of life but offers the potential to engineer and design life to whatever specifications we like. So does science have an answer for how life began? No but it certainly asks interesting questions and hints at possible new questions. It invites us all to consider the evidence from many directions. Does the lack of a definitive answer at the early stage of questioning give us reason to evoke the image of molecules acting as autonomous agents? It makes great narrative but leaves the questions themselves untouched. On the other hand life involves growth, it occurs when dynamic forces flow through constrictions imposed by static structures; cracks in ice, heat rising up through the earth's core, cosmic impacts, permeable membranes, the flow of water and of charged particles. Quality does not require or benefit from having human ambition attached to it. Static and Dynamic define the nature of Quality; beyond this, desire or ethical 'oughts' are just extra baggage. ...or bathwater depending on your metaphor of choice. ------------------------------------------------- "What the Dynamic force had to invent in order to move up the molecular level and stay there was a carbon molecule that would preserve its limited Dynamic freedom from inorganic laws and at the same time resist deterioration back to simple compounds of carbon again. A study of nature shows the Dynamic force was not able to do this but got around the problem by inventing two molecules: a static molecule able to resist abrasion, heat, chemical attack and the like; and a Dynamic one, able to preserve the subatomic indeterminacy at a molecular level and try everything in the ways of chemical combination. The static molecule, an enormous, chemically dead, plasticlike molecule called protein, surrounds the Dynamic one and prevents attack by forces of light, heat and other chemicals that would prey on its sensitivity and destroy it. The Dynamic one, called DNA, reciprocates by telling the static one what to do, replacing the static one when it wears out, replacing itself even when it hasn t worn out, and changing its own nature to overcome adverse conditions. These two kinds of molecules, working together, are all there is in some viruses, which are the simplest forms of life. This division of all biological evolutionary patterns into a Dynamic function and a static function continues on up through higher levels of evolution. The formation of semipermeable cell walls to let food in and keep poisons out is a static latch. So are bones, shells, hide, fur, burrows, clothes, houses, villages, castles, rituals, symbols, laws and libraries. All of these prevent evolutionary degeneration." (Lila, p. 169) Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
