As its normally used in physics, I think a phenomenon is an observable occurrence. The implication is that it occurs (or perhaps recurs) at a time. Wouldnt the Big Bang be a better candidate for first phenomenon than the first self-replication?[snip]
It seem to me, then, that your proposition that the first self-replication was the first phenomenon must be using the term in a sense that is neither of the usual physical or phenomenological sense. Can you explicate that proposition a bit further?
Modern physics agrees that all experience is subjective. A phenomenon is a classical subjective concept. No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon (J. A. Wheeler). It is also the subjective observer that decides what to observe and that designs instruments to extend the senses.
How does a primitive cell distinguish subjective phenomena from all the other concurrent physical processes? Phenomenology uses intentionality, or what awareness is about, to make this distinction, but what any physical process is about is only what an individual agent interprets it to be about. In all organisms, including humans, phenomena must arise from some form of sensory detection or memory. Below the cognitive level of memory with its learning and communication, a cells interpretation depends on information that must be heritable if it is to self-replicate and evolve. That means the interpretation is determined by the genes. For a primitive example, consider the physical force of gravity that acts uniformly on all matter, and of course on all matter in the cell. The law and force of gravity are physical processes that are not in themselves phenomena. It is only when the force is interpreted by genetically instructed statoliths enmeshed in a web of actin controlling growth that gravity becomes the cellular phenomenon called geotropism.
As a second example, consider the effects of light which illuminates the entire cell. It is only the photons that are absorbed by photoreceptor molecules that initiate a phototropic response. Again, the phenomenal information is the result of genetically determined molecular structures. A phenomenon in a cell can be described in detail by physical process, but the physical process itself is not a phenomenon. A phenomenon is information resulting from an individual subjects detection of a physical interaction. This is also the case for human cognitive phenomena.
Howard
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
