by Dr. David L. Abel
How did inanimate physical nature—mass, energy, the four basic forces of physics and their constants—program such non-physical formalisms needed to conceptually organize and compute initial life? What would have been the motive and mechanism for a prebiotic environment’s selection of function over non function?
Can a neural net accomplish sophisticated integrative function with mass (indiscriminate) depolarizations? What selectively steers messages down certain paths of a neural net (or buttons and strings), but not other paths?
What’s the difference between a signal and a message? Do messenger molecules convey meaning? If not, how can meaning be divorced from such exquisite genomic and epigenomic instructions, metabolic integration, structural organization, and biofunction?
Do metabolic pathways manifest any goal or purpose?
Is anything more goal-directed than the holistic metabolism needed to be and stay alive?
Are coin-flips at mere “bifurcation points” synonymous with bona fide “decision nodes,” “logic gates,” and “integrative configurable switch-settings”?
While some might want to sweep these questions under the rug for being too “metaphysical,” they are as foundational to the science of biology as mathematics is to physics. They are the only path to elucidation of gene emergence through natural process. These legitimate queries are the subject matter of the new scientific discipline known as ProtoBioCybernetics—the study of the generation of controls (not mere constraints) and regulation in the very first protocells.
requires programming at bona fide decision nodes.
Abstract: “Order,” “pattern,” “complexity,” “self-organization,” and “emergence” are all terms used extensively in... more
Abstract: “Order,” “pattern,” “complexity,” “self-organization,” and “emergence” are all terms used extensively in life-origin literature. Sorely lacking are precise and quantitative definitions of these terms. Vivid imagination of spontaneous creativity ensues from mystical phrases like “the adjacent other” and “emergence at the edge of chaos.” More wish-fulfillment than healthy scientific skepticism prevails when we become enamored with such phrases. Nowhere in peer-reviewed literature is a plausible hypothetical mechanism provided, let alone any repeated empirical observations or prediction fulfillments, of bona fide spontaneous “natural process self-organization.” Supposed examples show only one of two things: 1) spontaneous physicodynamic self-ordering rather than formal organization, or 2) behind-the-scenes investigator involvement in steering experimental results toward the goal of desired results. The very experiments that were supposed to prove spontaneous self-organization only provide more evidence of the need for artificial selection. Patterns are a form of order. Neither order nor combinatorial uncertainty (complexity) demonstrate an ability to compute or produce formal utility. Physical laws describe low-informational physicodynamic self-ordering, not high-informational cybernetic and computational utility.
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