UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION, PROBABILITY, AND LIFE’S ORIGIN
Part 1. Science and marxism
UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION, PROBABILITY, AND LIFE’S ORIGIN
Part 1. Science and marxism
The story of life—and the story of the modern class struggle—begins with the origin of the universe. We can’t trace our ancestry any farther back—and it can be argued that we can’t even trace it that far back. Although we know that life developed out of the inorganic environment on earth, and therefore is continuous with the history of the planet, we still don’t know enough about the origin of life to definitively trace our ancestry back through previous biological forms and then through the hypothesized forms of proto-life that preceded life itself.
Although the working class has no near-term stake in studying the theories of the origin of the universe and related astrophysical questions, all those involved in the working-class movement can benefit by thinking scientifically about the world in which we live, including the recognition that we are “citizens of time,”—that we live within a universe that has a beginning, a direction of motion, and a trajectory of development that produces many forms of evolutionary change. This evolving planet and its resources provide the ground we stand on as we struggle to find a road forward for the future of humanity. Working people can improve their readiness for playing the leading role in the ongoing processes of social change by gaining knowledge about the evolution of our own solar system, the planet we inhabit, the origin of living creatures, and their evolution. These processes of transformation of our material surroundings have created the foundation for human society and its distinctive cultural and social evolution.
We should not take the view that specially-educated professionals are the only ones capable of carrying out scientific studies. The revolutionists among us need to view ourselves as knowledgeable and responsible workers, as predisposed to take advantage of what the scientists have discovered and make this a part of our theoretical armament. Needless to say, we need an outlook grounded not only in the physical sciences but also in biology, economics, sociology, and history. Marxism is defined as scientific sociology.
So it is that Marxists have not ignored the natural world and its history as the starting point for life and for our species. The history of science is a history of the accumulation and advancement of knowledge of the world. Now it is up to the working class to take advantage of this process of discovery and make use of its key lessons as we struggle to end capitalism and build a fully-developed human society. Friedrich Engels in Anti-Duhring (1878), asserted that modern science had come to replace philosophy as the mode of inquiry necessary to discover the laws of existence of nature and humanity. After reviewing the stunning advances made in the sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology:
“Further: if no philosophy as such is any longer required, then also there is no more need of any system, not even of any natural system of philosophy. The perception that all the processes of nature are systematically connected drives science on to prove this systematic connection throughout, both in general and in particular. But an adequate, exhaustive scientific exposition of this interconnection, the formation of an exact mental image of the world system in which we live, is impossible for us, and will always remain impossible.”
--MECW, Vol. 25, p. 35
Science is the guiding light of the working class. Without a scientific view of the society we live in, we cannot overcome the oppressors who stand over us, exploit us, and increasingly degrade our conditions of life and labor. Their destructive methods lay waste to the natural resources on which humanity depends, and their competitive urges propel them to continue building an ever more massive stockpile of weapons with the capacity to eliminate all life on earth.
The science of society is Marxism. Marxism is considered “rubbish” by the members of the capitalist class and their political representatives. But workers are beginning to recognize that human society is the outcome of biological evolution, which itself is a product of the evolution of the earth, and all the developments that came before it. Workers will come to know that capitalism, currently the dominant system of social relations in the world, is the product of the cultural evolution of human existence. Workers will also realize that all social systems are transient, including the one into which we have been born.
Working people will continue to develop deeper knowledge about the decline of the strength of the capitalist-imposed regimes worldwide, and how their ruling classes’ capacity to exercise their control over all life and nature is weakening, crumbling, and producing disastrous consequences for billions of people. Zealous to enlarge their share of the world’s wealth at the expense of the labor of workers and farmers, the ultra-wealthy property owners and the governments subordinated to their needs have been accustomed to wreaking havoc on nature and humanity alike as their birthright.
In the Middle Ages, the forerunners of the capitalist class could be found among the merchants and bankers and their strivings to increase their wealth through the exchange of commodities, as well as making use of the credit systems of the day. But they were not yet capitalists in the modern sense. The creation of wealth through the exploitation of wage labor did not come to dominate Europe and North America until the period of the industrial revolution beginning in the mid-18th century. Since that time, the needs and goals of the capitalist class have been the central determining factor in the development of social and political institutions throughout the world.
But social systems have all been transient up to the present. Even though the relentlessly profit-hungry industrialists, bankers, marketers, and landlords continue to treat the world and its working population as nothing but resources to be utilized for their enrichment, the truth is that their very success is undermining their control of the world's human and material resources. The powers they seized in the growth phase of world capitalism—powers that enabled them to build gigantic productive machines and populous cities—are now increasingly backfiring as they enter more deeply into their declining phase. The history of capitalism is a complex matrix of evolving labor processes that never stop emerging, utilizing the creation ever-new marvels of science and technology, and only enters into its final phase of crisis as the system of exploitation loses profitability.
For those who believe that capitalism will never die, it would be a good idea to examine more closely how the world has come to be as it is. Fixing our attention on how we managed to arrive at the present epoch gives us a good idea of how we can effectively proceed forward into the next one. Frederick Engels achieved a deep understanding of how capital accomplished its stunning successes in the course of its conquest of social and economic power. The fruitful combination of science and labor, once appropriated by the capitalists, made possible the conscious expansion of technological and industrial development up until the late 20th century, but then began to sputter. Engels explained how the process of growing scientific knowledge sprang from the creativity of the human species, which itself was, and always has been, a product of the natural world.
“Thus at every step, we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature—but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.”
--(MECW, vol. 25, p. 461).
We should not assume that humanity has lost the capacity to consciously learn nature’s laws in order to act within their constraints to improve the environmental conditions we need to enable our species to thrive. Indeed, we should be aware that human ingenuity is still alive and well, in spite of what we are being told by the so-called "environmentalists," whose major preoccupation is the collapse of civilization and the demise of the human species, which they—against all evidence—believe is imminent. At the same time, they cling firmly to the belief that the capitalists, who are wreaking havoc on the atmosphere, the soil, and the world’s animal and human populations, must remain in power forever since there is no way to remove them. Nor do they openly proclaim their loyalty to the capitalists; indeed, they often put the blame on the ruling classes, but none of them believe that capitalism can be surpassed and replaced by a higher level of civilized society. Their pessimism about humanity runs too deep to allow themselves to think about an improved form of civilization. They don’t say that capitalism is the best possible system, or even that human society cannot go beyond capitalism—because to say that would open up a debate about a possible future beyond capitalism. They prefer to keep their thoughts restricted to individual or governmental solutions within the existing social framework: recycle waste appropriately, reduce consumption of electricity, reduce economic growth, reduce your carbon footprint, don’t eat meat, etc.
Origin of life
As we approach the issue of the origin of life from inorganic nature, we recognize that we won’t be able to utilize the same methods as those used in tracing the lineages of biological evolution. There is no direct line of descent from any particular terrestrial phenomenon to the first appearance of life-like chemical processes, since the earth was formed through the constant interaction of multiple tendencies, which continued to produce new phenomena as the earth cooled and solidified. However, by using modern methods of the examination of fossils, together with advances in the study of the earth’s geological and atmospheric history, scientists (and their students) can study and trace the lineages of the evolved species of multicellular life. But when it comes to the origin of life from non-life, there is no physical evidence to help us understand how that process began, nor what forms it took at the earliest stages. But we do know that it happened. And there is much research and study underway to find out what happened to promote the transition from the sterile pre-biotic world to the world of living beings.
Although more scientists are now addressing the issue of the origin of life, still the basic facts of the process are unknown. Terrence Deacon, professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley, has developed some useful hypotheses that indicate a way of thinking about how this transition might have occurred, based on the principles of inorganic chemistry, thermodynamics, and the emergence of complexity. [Deacon, Terrence W. Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter (p. 436)] For Deacon, the primary task is to develop a method for formulating realistic chemical scenarios that could lead to the emergence of life. This is an approach that excludes assumptions about what were the most important pre-biotic molecules, where they were located on the earth, which reactions or molecules came first, etc. And of course, we must exclude divine intervention, or any other supernatural source, even though these ideas have been inculcated into popular culture through the influence of long-standing traditions. We must not forget that under the rule of the bourgeoisie, popular culture has been molded and shaped through its dominance over the education system, the mass media, and the entertainment media.
The practical search for the origin of life began with an attempt to simulate the processes that must have occurred at the dawn of life. The so-called “Miller-Urey” experiment was conducted by Stanley Miller in 1952 and consisted of passing electrical charges through a mixture of water, ammonia, methane, and hydrogen contained within a sealed vessel (this concoction being a stand-in for the supposed “primordial soup” in which life originated). Analysis of the results produced after one week showed that a variety of amino acids had been generated. The experimental results were considered to be a success, but it was recognized that much more needed to be done. This was the first in a long series of attempts to experimentally produce potentially “organic” chemicals in various conditions.
The Miller-Urey experiment was carried out in a vessel with an artificial atmosphere low in oxygen (at the present time the atmosphere is about 20% oxygen). It was understood at the time that the prebiotic atmosphere was severely lacking in free oxygen, although the oxygen present was combined with carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen in a variety of compounds. The Russian Aleksandr Oparin had hypothesized this kind of prebiotic atmosphere in 1924. In the issue of 23 November 2012 of Nature, Clifford P. Brangwynne and Anthony A. Hyman wrote:
“Nearly 20 years after the book’s publication — and 60 years ago this year — Stanley Miller and Harold Urey tested Oparin’s hypothesis in a lab at the University of Chicago in Illinois. They sent a continuous electric current through a glass vial containing water, hydrogen, methane, and ammonia. Within a week, a substantial amount of the carbon had been converted into complex macromolecules, including many amino acids. This ‘Miller–Urey’ experiment confirmed the significance of Oparin’s ideas, and Miller duly referenced [Oparin’s book] The Origin of Life.
“Oparin’s work thus played a seminal part in the formulation of our modern ideas of life’s conception. His ideas on the organization of cells and first stirrings of life continued to attract an important audience. In 1957, a large international meeting (attended by Miller) was held in Moscow to discuss the origin of life, the proceedings of which make it clear that Oparin’s book had had a profound influence.”
--https://www.nature.com/articles/491524a
While experiments have not produced any definitive results regarding the initial conditions that determined life’s appearance, it’s useful to develop hypotheses about the formative processes and molecular mechanisms that could have arisen, leaving aside the specific ingredients at the outset. We need to rely on the latest geochemical science to reimagine the lifeless earth as it existed before the formation of any ongoing systematic arrangements of these particular chemical reactions. And we must keep in mind that these chemicals are not like little “objects.” As Richard Feynman has said, “Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen. . . . Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to, and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone.
https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_01.html#:~:text=Things%20on%20a%20very%20small,that%20you%20have%20ever%20seen
There were sites on the prebiotic earth in a liquid or gaseous state with abundant chemical activity involving the formation and dissolution of molecules involving carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, iron, and other elements, sometimes in the presence of catalytic metallic surfaces. But we need to understand that the existence of particular kinds of molecules does not automatically produce life or its precursors. While hypothesizing about what might have occurred will not, in itself, produce the definitive answer, it can reduce the range of possibilities by discarding erroneous approaches.
It helps to recognize some of the basic characteristics of life that distinguish it from non-life. One of these characteristics is the ability of living organisms to sustain themselves without an exterior source of energy. Energy is necessary for activity, both for internal metabolism as well as for interacting with its environment. Life must be able to extract free energy (sunlight or chemical energy) from the environment to facilitate the chemical reactions it needs for its activities. But before the question of internalizing the energy supply arises, there must exist some chemical structure that is able to persist—for a time—as an organized entity, capable of movement or activity.
Initially, chemical reactions, to reach a sufficiently stable state, can occur in a locality without an isolating boundary to separate them from the randomizing impingements of the local molecular environment. However, eventually, such relatively stable molecular aggregations must acquire a bounding coat, or membrane, to isolate themselves from outside destabilizing collisions or reactions. Life needs a “self” to distinguish itself from the “other.” Oparin recognized this problem and hypothesized that stable persistent chemical complexes could isolate themselves from surrounding disruptions by occurring within enclosed spaces called “coacervates.” As Brangwynne and Hyman explain:
“Oparin went on to describe a mechanism by which macromolecules would self-assemble into large liquid-like structures that he called ‘complex coacervates’—what today might be called colloidal assemblies. He suggested that these protocells were a key step in the origin of life. However, given the uncertainty at that time about the nature of biological macromolecules, it was unclear exactly how these colloids might form.”
--Brangwynne, ibid.
Freeman Dyson, in his book Origins of Life, Cambridge University Press, 1999, described Oparin’s view of the original enclosures for these macromolecular operations as the “garbage-bag world,” as he explains (p. 37):
“The garbage-bag world is not so elegant and not so widely accepted. It is a generalized version of the world imagined by Oparin. Life began with little bags, the precursors of cells, enclosing small volumes of dirty water containing miscellaneous garbage. A random collection of molecules in a bag may occasionally contain catalysts that cause the synthesis of other molecules that act as catalysts to synthesize other molecules, and so on. Very rarely a collection of molecules may arise that contains enough catalysts to reproduce the whole population as time goes on. The reproduction does not need to be precise. It is enough if the catalysts are maintained in a rough statistical fashion. The population of molecules in the bag is reproducing itself without any exact replication.”
--https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Life-Freeman-Dyson/dp/0521626684
The noted physicist Ilya Prigogine (The End of Uncertainty, 1997) commented on the instability of molecular aggregations in nature and their constant interactions which generate indeterminate states which lie at the very heart of nature. They are indeterminate because none of them are part of a strictly isolated system—all systems of molecular interaction are only relatively isolated in a limited area of chemical activity. There are no absolute or definitive “boundaries” between nearby “systems” of chemical interactions. They all mutually interfere in a random way. Nature cannot produce a permanently isolated organized system of chemical reactions. But scientists generally recognize that whatever initial conditions are chosen to design a lab exercise, these conditions are themselves artificial, and cannot replicate real conditions in nature. At the same time, it must be emphasized that knowledge of biochemistry, and the physical laws that underly it, has progressed through this process of experimentation and analysis of results.
-- https://www.amazon.com/End-Certainty-Ilya-Prigogine/dp/0684837056
The contrast between nature on the one side, and controlled experimental conditions on the other, must be taken into account in establishing any experiment design. The imperative of establishing isolated conditions for laboratory experiments is key. It is true that in nature there are relative degrees of isolation between molecular assemblies in liquids and gases, since they are separated in space by distances that are determined by the chaotic intermingling of the forces of repulsion and attraction. However, in spite of these differences in the degree of interaction among these various molecular associations, there are no impenetrable barriers separating them. They impinge upon one another to a greater or lesser extent. Various forms of association and disaggregation are constantly occurring. But there is no possibility that a perfectly isolated system can form. Molecular aggregations are by nature temporary and open to change. It’s this principle that underlies the processes of universal, planetary, and biological evolution and why every living thing must die. It’s the lack of isolation that generates the instability and the relative unpredictability of the future evolution of their activity.
Nature is probabilistic at its core, argues Prigogine (ibid, p. 29). He quotes the physicist Emile Borel, who said:
“The representation of gaseous matter by a model, composed of molecules with positions and velocities which are rigorously determined at a given instant is, therefore, a pure abstract fiction. ... as soon as one supposes the indeterminacy of the external forces, the effect of collisions will very rapidly disperse the trajectory bundles which are supposed to be infinitely narrow, and the problem of the subsequent movement of the molecules becomes, within a few seconds, very indeterminate, in the sense that a colossal number of different possibilities are a priori equally probable.”
--Prigogine, ibid.
In the aggregate, the position and velocity of individual atoms or molecules are indeterminate. This finding gives rise to the science of quantum physics. This analysis of nature reveals a “nanoscale” world that is qualitatively different from the macroscopic world in which Newtonian physics, known as “determinism,” prevails. Erwin Schrödinger, an eminent quantum theorist, argued in What is Life? (1944),
“Only in the cooperation of an enormously large number of atoms do statistical laws begin to operate and control the behavior of these assemblies with an accuracy increasing as the number of atoms involved increases. It is in that way that the events acquire truly orderly features. All the physical and chemical laws that are known to play an important part in the life of organisms are of this statistical kind; any other kind of lawfulness and orderliness that one might think of is being perpetually disturbed and made inoperative by the unceasing heat motion of the atoms.”
--https://www.amazon.com/What-Life-Autobiographical-Sketches-Classics/dp/1107604664
Deacon points out that the second law of thermodynamics is a probabilistic tendency, not a law involving forces or predictable outcomes. As he explains,
“The second law of thermodynamics is only a probabilistic tendency, not a necessity, and that offers some wiggle room.” The “wiggle room” is the latitude that allows deviations from the deterministic Newtonian scheme of interactions of force and mass, in which given quantities of matter and energy interact according to the ‘laws of physics’ to provide predictable results. The origin of life cannot be considered apart from this thermodynamic ‘wiggle room,’ which allows the formation and perpetuation of organized structures of molecules. The creation and continuity of systems of increasingly complex molecular aggregates only appear to violate the second law of thermodynamics. (Some proponents of “intelligent design” argue that evolution is impossible because the second law of thermodynamics states that the outcome of all chemical reactions increases entropy, or disorder, in the universe. If this were true, there would be no organized systems at all. Their appreciation of science is limited.) The second law is a statistical prediction of a net increase of entropy, or dissipation of heat energy, in the universe.”
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Incomplete_Nature_How_Mind_Emerged_from/jxuiu5xabn8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
The early universe cooled, and in the process developed immense volumes of organized systems of particles of matter held together by atomic or chemical bonds, and these organized entities were dispersed in galaxies, solar systems, and a variety of solidified or gaseous masses. But the universe continues to expand, and as it does so, these organized systems tend to dissipate, disassemble and dissolve. Initially, what is known as “matter” did not exist. It took time for atoms to consolidate and differentiate out of the disorganized plasma initially created in the “big bang.”
But why would organized systems, such as atoms, molecules, and minerals, come into being if entropy were constantly increasing? It’s because even though entropy increases, this is only a statistical result of random chemical processes that continually create structure and organization as well as dissolution and dissipation. In the long run, dissipation wins, but at the same time, many organized forms of matter grow and take shape, utilizing the available heat energy from the many fusion and fission processes scattered throughout the galaxies. Heat energy can create atomic states that facilitate the formation of chemical bonds.
Heat can play a role in the formation of atomic and molecular aggregates that can serve as a basis for an increasing elaboration of complex structures. Heat can likewise break chemical bonds. The planet had to cool sufficiently to reach a point when chemical activity was free enough to form molecular aggregations that could remain stable for enough time to form structures in gaseous or liquid environments. These structures, provided they have the potential to maintain their existing level of organization, can build upon, and extend themselves, to attain higher levels of complexity. These processes can become relatively long-lasting by utilizing free energy to protect themselves against the thermodynamic tendency to dissolve and disaggregate. And, as we know, organized structures can produce self-perpetuating processes through their own cycles of energy creation. At a higher level of organization, e.g., in living beings, internal energy generation becomes built into the aggregate structure, for example, the citric acid cycle (the series of reactions that produces energy for the cells).
But, apart from the structure-forming processes that capture energy from the surrounding atmosphere, or generate it internally, there are structure-forming processes that release energy to the surrounding atmosphere as the structure is built. In Incomplete Nature, Deacon explains that self-organizing processes are already common in the inorganic world, and he gives the example of snowflake crystal formation, in which there is an accretion of elaborate crystalline forms with hexagonal shapes. The formation of snowflakes is a process that creates a crystalline array, a more organized relationship among water molecules than in the liquid state, but at the same time releases energy to the surrounding atmosphere. Water molecules spontaneously “fall together” to form an ordered crystalline structure that has a lower energy level than separate water molecules. Organized crystalline structures then emerge spontaneously any time atmospheric conditions favor snow.
Terrence Deacon explains (p. 257):
“A quite different example of morphodynamic change is exhibited by the amplification and propagation of constraints that takes place in the growth of snow crystals. The structure of an individual snow crystal reflects the interaction of three factors: (1) the micro-structural biases of ice crystal lattice growth, which result in a few distinct hexagonally symmetric growth patterns; (2) the radially symmetric geometry of heat dissipation; and (3) the unique history of changing temperature, pressure, and humidity regimes that surround the developing crystal as it falls through the air.”
--Deacon, ibid.
Another example of the spontaneous formation of hexagonal patterns in nature is the honeycomb. Although constructed by honeybees, not weather, these patterns are formed without premeditated design. As Philip Ball explained honeycomb formation on April 27, 2016, issue of Nautilus online:
“Why hexagons, though? It’s a simple matter of geometry. If you want to pack together cells that are identical in shape and size so that they fill all of a flat plane, only three regular shapes (with all sides and angles identical) will work: equilateral triangles, squares, and hexagons. Of these, hexagonal cells require the least total length of the wall, compared with triangles or squares of the same area. So, it makes sense that bees would choose hexagons, since making wax costs them energy, and they will want to use up as little as possible—just as builders might want to save on the cost of bricks. This was understood in the 18th century, and Darwin declared that the hexagonal honeycomb is “absolutely perfect in economizing labor and wax.”
“Darwin thought that natural selection had endowed bees with instincts for making these wax chambers, which had the advantage of requiring less energy and time than those with other shapes. But even though bees do seem to possess specialized abilities to measure angles and wall thickness, not everyone agrees about how much they must rely on them. That’s because making hexagonal arrays of cells is something that nature does anyway.”
-- https://nautil.us/why-nature-prefers-hexagons-235863/
Another example of the abiotic spontaneous formation of hexagonal cells is provided by Rayleigh-Bénard cells. Deacon explains (p. 250):
“Highly regular shaped convection cells (hereafter termed Bénard cells) can form in a process known as Rayleigh-Bénard convection in a uniformly heated thin layer of liquid (e.g., oil). In 1900, Claude Bénard observed that a cellular deformation would form on the free surface of a liquid with a depth of about a millimeter when it was uniformly heated from the bottom and dissipated this heat from its top surface. This often converged to a regular pattern of tiny, roughly hexagonally shaped columns of moving fluid, producing a corresponding pattern of hexagonal surface dimples. These Bénard cells form when the liquid is heated to the point where unorganized (i.e., unconstrained and normally distributed) molecular interactions are less efficient at conducting the heat from the container bottom to the liquid surface than if the liquid moves in a coordinated flow. The point at which this transition occurs depends on a number of factors, including the depth, specific gravity, the viscosity of the liquid, and the temperature gradient.”
--Deacon, ibid.
In the early formation of the universe, matter grows out of the cooling of the elements and becomes incorporated in galaxies, stars, planets, asteroids, and other gaseous, liquid, colloidal, and solid formations. At the same time, the universal material processes that humans have come to analyze through relativity, Newtonian mechanics, and quantum physics continue to evolve. We should not imagine that anything in the universe has reached a point of completion, or stasis. By the time entropy has comes close to its maximum, our own sun and solar system will have long since been converted to dust. This indicates that the equations we utilize to define and interpret material relations (f=ma, e=mc2, etc.) should not be regarded as fixed and final. At this point we cannot predict the long-range impact of the laws of thermodynamics. Nor can we trace the future evolution of quantum theory.
As the universe evolves toward its anticipated destiny, all the energy that has been consumed in binding these systems together dissipates; the organized systems fall apart, and energy becomes randomly dispersed. This dissipative, randomizing process is called the increase of entropy. At the end of the universe, the hypothetical termination of this process, there is a uniform, random distribution of particles and energy. This end-state of matter is called “the heat death of the universe” because no further increase of heat diffusion is possible. In the end, entropy wins! (But who knows if this is really “the end”? Maybe there is more . . .
Deacon, referring to the “wiggle room” afforded by the second law of thermodynamics (see above) says: “
“This loophole does, however, allow for the global increase of entropy to create limited special conditions that can favor the persistent generation of local asymmetries (i.e., constraints). And it is the creation of symmetries of asymmetries—patterns of similar differences—that we recognize as being an ordered configuration, or as an organized process, distinct from the simple symmetry of an equilibrium state. What needs to be specified, then, are the conditions that create such a context.
--Deacon, ibid.
Deacon puts stress on the need to understand “constraints” in the material world. No organized structure can emerge except through preconditions that prevail at a certain time and place. There are no “timeless” structures, nor are there entities with no particular location in space, although relationships among entities can take on forms that can only be analyzed indirectly. (Quantum physics introduces alternate forms that are not explicable by Newtonian physics.) A physical structure cannot exist without its material constituents or the configuration of its limits and relationships. Temperature, pressure, and the availability of the appropriate chemicals are limiting factors. For complex structures to emerge, or for existing structures to develop further, “constraints” will limit the degrees of probability for this or that constructive change to occur. These limitations are constraints. The “wiggle room” Deacon mentioned earlier is defined by the material constraints which make up the prior conditions that determine the starting point for any newly emerging process.
This principle of constraints also applies, for example, in historical development. We recognize that the Ancient Greeks, even with Aristotle’s guidance, could not have developed a rocket to the moon. The Greeks of that time were constrained by the state of scientific knowledge that the most capable theorists had developed. Every stage of historical development is built upon the foundations of the material and cultural achievements prevailing in the given epoch. These material and theoretical limits are constantly in conflict with the potentials latent in the contemporaneous populations. This tension between what is and what can be keeps driving scientific and technological advancement.
An equilibrium state, in a relatively localized section of the natural world, is represented by the condition that there is no possible action that can increase entropy, that entropy has been maximized, at the given moment, in this given portion of the universe. For any given molecular structure to persist it must generate processes that constantly restore its stability. Stable structures exist on the borderline between disaggregation and self-preservation, yet there are gradations of relative stability, which can be strict or lenient. And we must recall that absolute isolation from the surrounding medium is not possible for very long — something is always impinging from the “outside,” even though there is no absolute border between “inside” and “outside.” Yet partial, relative isolation is possible because of this tension between destruction and creation. And it is in these conditions that life processes occur. For living creatures, the condition that defines the balance between the forces of destruction and those of restoration is called “homeostasis.” But at the same time we recognize that all homeostatic conditions are transitory —there are no eternal survivors in the kingdoms of living species.
Among the animal and plant species at high levels of development, individual organisms reproduce and die. However there are extremes of longevity. At a low stage of development, individual organisms, or colonies of cells, can persist for centuries or millennia without dying. For these latter phenomena, there is a PubMed article by Petralia et al in the NIH online, see:
“Basal metazoans [sponges, jellyfish] typically maintain many pluripotent stem cells that are capable of differentiating into all types of cells in the body; this gives these animals incredible abilities to grow, regress, regrow, and regenerate their bodies as needed. They can become in some cases potentially immortal. However, during the evolution of more complex animal body forms, these abilities were reduced or lost, apparently in an effort to produce complex body structures for sophisticated functions while still avoiding the production of destructive tumors. Nevertheless, there is no direct correlation of increased body complexity with reduced lifespan.”
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R.+Petralia,+M.+Mattson,+P.+Yao,+Ageing+Res+Rev.+2014+Jul%3B+0:+66%E2%80%9382&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart R. Petralia, M. Mattson, P. Yao, Ageing Res Rev. 2014 Jul; 0: 66–82:
The range of observed creation and destruction of life forms observed by these scholars—the antagonism between longevity and entropy—reflects the various modes that express the same contradiction. Natural selection works to preserve the stability of complex systems that have arisen in biological evolution as they resist the unyielding pressure of the second law of thermodynamics. The complex structures elaborated by natural selection exist within a thermodynamic space that is far beyond thermodynamic equilibrium. The scientific analysis of the development and sustainability of “far from equilibrium” conditions refers to these systems as “dissipative structures,” and this theme was treated extensively by Prigogine and others. The structures are “dissipative” because while living cells are expending energy in their life processes, they produce more entropy than they absorb.